Page 105 of Shadowlands Omega

“You really are a goodie two shoes,” Merlin says on a laugh. “Don’t let Echo find out you let me go, or she’ll kill you herself.” She kisses the side of my temple and I bang my head back into her nose, hearing the satisfying crunch of bone and Merlin’s responding curse. I decide then that I like bad things happening to Merlin.

“Fuck you, Omega,” Merlin shouts, but she’s also loosened her grip. I fall, rather than fight, and Merlin curses again when I hit the ground, shooting right out of her reach. I scramble over the stones, scraping up my hands and knees.

“Noon!” I lock eyes with her. Someone is screaming her name, one of the Fates. I say it again, too. “Noon, wait…”

But she only looks at me and whispers, “It’s better like this…” She takes a step over the edge of the cliff.

Not a leap, not a dive, no twist, no finesse. A simple step that could have looked accidental if I hadn’t seen the end written in eyes filled with such sadness. She disappears into Oblivion, into Zaoul’s greedy embrace, and I…I push at her with my wind, but it’s not enough to keep her here.

“No…” I gasp, scrambling to my feet — or trying to — but a hand that can only be Merlin’s grabs me by the back of my tattered dress and yanks me backwards. Something hot hits me. I can hear Owenna screaming. I can hear Yaron roaring. I can feel wetness on my back, dripping down my dress, but I don’t feel the pain from where Merlin just stabbed me until she withdraws her blade.

“Hawh,” comes my surprised gasp. I look down as Merlin pulls me back into her chest. She turns me around to face the cliff and all of its occupants, to face Yaron, who is thirty long paces away now, blocked by a Berserker that has taken tags out of his flesh. He’s too deep in his rut. He isn’t protecting himself. I should…I have to stop…have to…have to save… My thoughts are flickering and have begun to fade…

“Gatamora doesn’t need Alphas or Berserkers or fucking Omegas,” Merlin whispers in my ear. “Gatamora is mine, meant only for Betas.” Merlin pushes me away from her and slides her blade across my throat, slitting it. Blood spurts — my blood — and I gasp, choking on it.

I’m cold when she shoves me away from her body and I fall to my knees. “Kiandah!” comes the roar, this time, a man’s.

I blink and see Yaron caught in a transformation — half man, half creature. He jumps from the undead Berserker’s back, landing on two legs instead of four limbs. His distended jaw snaps shut, the axe falling from it into one of his hands. He cocks it back. Yaron bellows out a roar as the axe flies from his fingertips, inches away from my face.THUNK.The sound it makes when it connects with flesh.

Screams rise up. I can hear the voices of Trash City Betas screaming Merlin’s name. Running. So much running. A wall of crimson runs down from Shadow Ridge, meeting the dozens of undead and disposing of them. The Fates are sprinting towards the edge of the cliff. Their faces are elated, despite the loss of the chained Omega and of Merlin. They seem victorious and that’s when I realize that I can no longer hear the birds battling.

Yaron is rushing towards me, his limbs all distending and contracting uncontrollably, but the undead Berserker still has him in its sights. It tackles him to the ground. I choke on my own blood, but Yaron — as a man — manages to grab the creature by its back fur, toss it over his head and slam it on the ground between us. He charges it,divinginto its deteriorating flesh and entering it as a man, but emerging from it as a beast.

Yaron…

Yaron explodes from its belly as a Berserker, drenched in black venom and reeking of blood. The lower half of his head shimmers in transformation, never fully forming into that of a man, even as he opens his jowls and says,“Do you accept my bond, Kiandah?”The raspy hiss hardly sounds like him and I know I’m not talking to Yaron at all. This is his monster. And it is mine. And it wants me to keep. And I am its. Because I was even before he knew I existed.

I nod as darkness comes for me. Pain comes next,stemming from my throat and my side, and then moving everywhere else. Heat and warmth radiate through my body. I don’t want to die.

29 | The Beast

Closer to Kiandah

Kiandah lives.She is shaking. My hands — my Alpha’s hands — cover the wound on her throat while I bend over her and drip thick ropes of venom directly into the wounds. It was not as deep as it looked. The wound on her back is, but it did not hit her most vital organs. She will live.

Kiandah lives.

And my rut has retreated enough for me to be able to relinquish control of this body back to Yaron. Just long enough for him to get her to safety.

Then I will return.

30 | Yaron

Orias highway line

My mind is clearer than it was, even if my body remains that of my beast.I need him and he allows me to manipulate him assheneeds.

I carry her cradled in one of my beastly arms, the other three limbs pounding even louder against the hard-packed earth of the highway line. I’ve done this before and Ihateit. Brega’s hooves beat beside me, carrying Sipho who sits stiffly, covered in wounds, Owenna’s unconscious body draped across his lap.

Kiandah’s heartbeat returned to normal with my venom flooding her veins, aided by the copious quantities my body in rut was able to produce. And now her beautiful, wondrous heart pounds as she wakes. She struggles in my arm. She wants to walk, to ride, to see her sister, to check my wounds. She’s been speaking to me the entire time, but I cannot speak to her and not only because I use my beast’s throat.

I could not speak to her in any other form, in any other state. My heart is in my mouth, sitting in the back of my throat. Biting her, injecting my venom into her system, bonding her but only because she said I could…

Everything about the moment was bliss.

Everything about the moment was torture.

Because I had plans…oh the plans I had for her. Plans to lay her across my bed, to worship and be worshipped, to dominate and be dominated, to beg and plead and please her. To take her beneath a cloudless sky underneath a moon that rose red. Instead, my moment was stolen from me by a weak pulse, gushing red blood, a simple, fluttering nod, and fucking Merlin.

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